4<' DAVENPOirr acadkmv of natural SCIKNCES. 



Johnson's Cyclopa'dia says : 



•• Anything which lias value nniy i)e used as money. Tin was 

 thus employed in ancient Syracuse and Britain, iron in Sparta, cat- 

 tle in Rome and Germany, a preparation of leather among the Car- 

 thaginians, platinum in Russia, lead in Burmah, nails in Scotland, 

 pieces of silks among the Chinese, cubes of pressed tea in Tartary. salt in 

 Abyssinia, cowry shells on the coast of Africa, slaves among the Anglo- 

 Saxons [a bad pre-eminence for the Anglo-Saxons, surely], tobacco in 

 Virginia, codfish in Xewfoundlaiul, bullets and wampum in the early 

 liistory of Massachusetts, logwood in Cami)eachy. sugar in the West 

 indies, soap in Mexico, etc." 



He says "anj'thing that has value," but here are named tlie cowry 

 shell, wampum, etc.. which have no intrinsic value, unless their possible 

 use as ornaments might be so considered, and even that would hardly 

 apply to the cowry, which is probably "seldom used as an ornament. 



Prof . Jevons says, in the volume entitled -'Money and the Mechan- 

 ism of Exchange," of the International Series, ' In India the current 

 rate of these cowry shells used to be about -5,000 shells for one rupee, at 

 which rate each shell is worth about 1-200 of a penny;" and he says, 

 •' among the Fijians lo/ia^e'.s teeth served in the place of cowries, and 

 white teeth were exchanged for red teeth somewhat in the ratio of shil- 

 lings to sovereigns." Among other articles of ornament or of special 

 value as currency, he mentions yellow amber, engraved stones, such as 

 the Egyptian scaraba-i, and tusks of ivory. He further says that while 

 various manufactured commodities, such as, for example, pieces of cot- 

 ton cloth, might very naturally be used as a currency, as was the case in 

 several countries, such cloth having an actual value, it is not so easy to 

 understand the origin of the curious straw money which circulated until 

 1094 in Portugal, and which consisted of small mats, called libongos, 

 woven out of rice straw, and worth about U pence each. These mats 

 must originally, he thinks, have had some use apart from that as a cur- 

 rency. 



He speaks also of the not iinprobalile suggestion of Boucher de Per- 

 thes, one of the eai-ly explorers and collectors of flint implements in the 

 gravel beds of the A^alley of the Somme in Switzerland, that, '• perhaps, 

 afterall, the finely woi-ked stone implements iiow so frequently discovered, 

 were among the earliest mediums of exchange. Some of them are cer- 

 tainly made of jade, nephrite, or other hard stones, only found in distant 

 countries, so that an active traffic in such implements must have existed 

 in times of which we have no records whatever." 



Prof. Jevons also refers to '' some obscuie allusions in classical authors 

 to a wooden money circulating among the Byzantines, and to a wooden 

 talent used at Antioch and Alexandria," but says that, '• in the absence 

 of fuller information as to their nature, it is impossible to do more than 

 mention them." 



In the American Encyclopiedia I read that "of the aboriginal money 

 of the American continent, from the mounds in and adjacent to the Val- 

 ley of the Mississii)pi, si)ecimens have been obtained, composed of lig- 

 nite, coal, bone, shell, terra-cotta, mica, pearl, carnelian, chalcedony, 



